Alice Lauder/Part 2/Chapter 5

CAMPBELL found so much to attract him in the little colonial village that he determined to spend the rest of his furlough in its leafy and surge-circled bosom. He found a quiet lodging in a farmhouse on the top of the cliff, looking straight over the Pacific Ocean towards the mystic Antarctic regions; and there he unpacked his books, his violin, his MS. sketch of “Life in Northern India” (which might be destined to grow some day into a thick, fat, green-covered volume, and be spoken of in years to come as the standard work of the century on this subject). He also bought a couple of young horses for a mere song—that was what the seller termed the transaction, all unknowing that the composers are few and far between who would realize £50 (cash) on their inspirations, as he did. At all events the mare was cheap at the price, and possibly she might carry off a small hurdle race some day if he took her back to ​India with him. He flattered himself that Green Street was just the quiet, sleepy, restful little hollow he had been seeking for all his life, well out of the Society track, and inhabited by a few nice friendly souls, principally Mrs. Austin and Alice Lauder, who would provide him with human sympathy and yet not distract him from the pleasing depths of literary work in which he intended to engulf himself. There were half-a-dozen men, too, in the neighbourhood, or in the village, with whom he easily fraternized, finding in this hardy type of young Englishmen once removed, or even in the undiluted native colonial, something pleasantly strong, manly, and individual. The type seemed, on the whole, more handmade and less ordered by the hundred dozen than that of the parent stock. Campbell rapidly became almost too popular, and could hardly move without a bodyguard of what Clare designated the rag-tag and bob-tail of the district. It was invariably found that he had been to school with the doctor’s younger brother; or he had played cricket against the parson’s team once up in Yorkshire; or, if the worst came to the worst, he had often heard of the bank manager’s brother-in-law from a man in the club at Bombay who used to play whist with him. On these grounds he was at once seized ​and confiscated to the hearty, easy-going hospitality of such places; and, though he protested bitterly in his letters home against these interruptions to his severer studies, at heart there was no doubt that he thoroughly enjoyed himself. A hardly-contested election taking place just then gave occasion to a civil war of words which divided the population into two camps, composed on the one side (according to the speaker) of true and liberal-hearted patriots; on the other of sneaks, poltroons, mean whites, office-seekers, and loafers. The government of the day were supposed to be moving heaven and earth—and perhaps another place in which they might have more influence—to get their man in. Arthur threw himself con amore into the fight against them, with the result that the ministerial paper alluded to him as a popularity hunter, if not an actual felon and dog-stealer; and in its bi-weekly issue uttered dark sayings as to idiotic globe-trotters, sprigs of nobility, selfish capitalists and owners of inflated moneybags, who were determined to crush the poor man body and soul, and to destroy the hopes of future generations by voting against the government nominee for the rising district of Green Street. Although in some lights these scathing reproofs might fall wide of the mark—for, as ​Campbell observed himself, he had no moneybags and had had to work hard for his living ever since he could speak—still they gave a certain prestige to his reputation and helped to consolidate the party of law and order against the infatuated theories of a few Socialistic windbags (vide opposition paper, published every other evening).